I guess most westerns would count (Bonanza?)
There was a cop/detective who lived in a trailer (maybe Columbo)
The Rockford Files. He lived in an old trailer at the beach.
I recall that on the rare occasions they visited a character’s apartment on Night Court, the layout was always the same, with door on the left, entering on a living room, with a kitchenette at far right and bathroom/bedrooms never seen but tucked away in the back.
Flintstones definitely lived in a one-level house. In one episode, Wilma tries to impress some snooty visitors and enlists Betty to pretend to be the maid, “Fifi” (or something). Fred, not in on the gag, identifies Betty by name and is told by Wilma that he must be confusing “Fifi” with Betty, the upstairs maid.
Fred: We don’t have an upstairs maid! We don’t even have an upstairs!
Nope, definitely the bedrooms were upstairs, and you see the staircase from the main room.
The The Wonder Years house was indeed a single-story ranch house. The Douglas house in Green Acres also has one story.
I don’t klnow if cartoons count, but the Hills of King of the Hill live in a ranch house.
A bungalow is a sigle story house…
chinbender writes:
> My WAG would be that it has more to do with the idea of how the “typical
> American” family lives.
I think this is closer than anything else that people have guessed here. There’s an unstated rule in American TV that (nearly) every character must live as if they are well above the average for even a middle-class American. Indeed, their lifestyle must be closer to something that only an upper-middle-class person can afford. This is true even if it’s established that they have jobs that would allow them, at best, a struggling working-class existence. If they live in the suburbs, they must own a two-story house with a reasonably large yard. If they live in a nice section of a big city, they must live in an apartment that would be very expensive to either own or rent. Denial of the reality of most Americans’ real lives is a standard of American TV.